After he’d wheeled the cart out of the room, Tony rubbed his forehead and said, “That was fucking horrible. Let’s never do it again.”
She smiled, because at least she wasn’t the only one. And because he was trying to shake her out of her funk.
Tony smiled back. “What do you want to do for the next hour or two?”
“Can we go up the beach? There’s an artists’ colony that’s about twenty minutes’ walk. The aesthetician told me about it.”
“Sure you don’t want to lay by the pool? Your last day in the lap of luxury.”
“I’d rather move, if you’re game.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She threw some water and sunscreen into her purse, and they went down to the beach and took their shoes off, leaving them next to several other pairs by the resort’s steps so they could walk on the hard-packed sand by the surf.
“Nice morning,” Tony said.
“It is.”
It was beautiful. Seventy degrees, sunny, with a breeze off the water. Paradise.
“We should take another vacation sometime,” he said. “Maybe leave the kids with my sisters or your mom and dad and drive up to Canada. Take that second honeymoon you wanted, just the two of us.”
“That would be fun.”
She tried for a cheery smile.
Tony took her hand and squeezed it.
What she would have given a month ago, even a week ago, to be here in the sand with her husband beside her, telling her that.
This is what you wanted. Everything you wanted.
Amber looked out over the water, frustrated because she didn’t feel the way she was supposed to, and pretending she did made her feel plasticized and vaguely ill.
“Are you worried about Jake?” Tony asked.
“Not really. I feel bad that he’s sick, but you said he sounded okay.”
“He did, yeah.”
“And my mom will spoil him, I’m sure.”
“So what’s the problem, bun?”
The sound of the surf rang in her ears, and the question struck her in the heart, a quivering arrow.
What’s the problem?
The same question he’d asked her all those years ago when he took her apartment door off its hinges and flushed her out of her burrow.
The same words he’d said when he walked into the house and found her weeping at the kitchen table, a positive pregnancy test in front of her and two feral toddlers clamoring for her attention.
What’s the problem?
You can tell me. Let me do something. Let me help.
She looked down at Tony’s bare feet crusted with sand, his hairy calves and the khaki cargo shorts she’d bought him ages ago.